Red Wings-Bruins set-up: Detroit, Boston both search for consistency

The Detroit Red Wings face off against the Boston Bruins tonight (7 PM, Versus/WXYT--if you have DirecTV, you need to head to a friend's house or sports bar to see this one) hoping to establish the same kind of consistency that the Bruins have yet to find. 6-6-and-1 Bruins have followed the, "Lose, then win" formula over their first 13 games, dropping a 1-0 decision to the New York Rangers on Sunday.

While they haven't faced the same free agency and injury-induced losses that the Red Wings have muddled through, the Bruins will play without the services of Marc Savard and Milan Lucic on Tuesday, and lost Phil Kessel to a massive offer sheet-turned-trade, so the Bruins have found themselves somewhat offensively starved of late. As such Boston Herald's Stephen Harris reports that the B's worked on restoring their offensive punch during Monday's practice:

November 3, Boston Herald: “We’re playing well enough to win,” coach Claude Julien said after
his offense-filled practice. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be
winning more games than we are, if we score those goals. Somehow you’ve
got to find a way to score, and it starts in practice.”

Julien did his part by again shaking up his lines, continuing his
hunt for scoring. Reunited was the David Krejci-Blake Wheeler-Michael
Ryder line that was so successful most of last season. Marco Sturm went
on a line with Mark Recchi and Patrice Bergeron, a center with whom he
has had past chemistry.

“Sometimes a little familiarity is good,” Julien said. “We hope this
will help our team. That Krejci line was good for us last year, and
Sturmie’s always been better with Bergy. It’s just a matter of
hopefully finding the right mix here that will help to get us out of
this funk.”

The top priority was tightening and solidifying the team defense and
system play. They were sloppy and careless early in the season, but
those flaws have been corrected. The B’s have delivered very strong
three-zone showings, doing nearly everything right, except scoring.

“It happens,” Recchi said. “You go through stretches like this. It’s
just that we’re all going through it at once. There’s a lot of great
things we’re doing now. As long as we keep focusing on competing hard
and playing well defensively, the offense will come. If we can continue
to play great defense and limit the other teams, eventually the puck
will start going in.”

The Bruins most likely will be without Marc Savard (foot) and Milan Lucic (finger) for most, if not all, of November. The Red Wings are also without two significant up-front pieces in Johan Franzen (knee) and Valtteri Filppula (wrist). Franzen, one of the league’s better power forwards, might not return until February. Filppula, a rising two-way center, broke his wrist Thursday and could miss as much as two months.

“The guys that we’re talking about coming back, they’re not coming back for a long time,’’ said Detroit coach Mike Babcock. “We’re either getting going without them or we’re not going. That’s just the facts. You look at Boston’s lineup, it’s much like ours that way. They’ve got some high-end guys that are out. No one cares. You’ve just got to find a way to survive and win.’’

And he talked to Marco Sturm about his reunion with Patrice Bergeron:

“Obviously we have to score more goals,’’ said Sturm, whose team was blanked by the Rangers Sunday, 1-0. “Me and Bergy have played together for a long time. So we’re mixing things up and see if we can score more goals.’’

Since his arrival from San Jose in the Joe Thornton blockbuster Nov. 30, 2005, Sturm had been a perpetual partner for Bergeron. The pair, with Brad Boyes and Chuck Kobasew seeing time on the right side, played in all situations. But 11 games into 2008-09, after the duo flickered early, coach Claude Julien busted them up and didn’t reunite them until Dec. 18. That night, Sturm, playing in his first game since Nov. 17 (he’d been shelved because of concussion-like symptoms), tore the ACL and meniscus in his left knee and didn’t play again in 2008-09.

November 2, NHL.com/DetroitRedWings.com: Big Story: After dominant regular seasons by both clubs in
2008-09, the Wings and Bruins haven't experienced the success that has
been projected thus far this time around. Goaltending has played a huge
role in Detroit's mediocre start, as the club is allowing more than
three goals per game (3.33). Boston's offense, meanwhile, is
struggling, as it's averaging only 2.38 goals per contest. The Bruins
have scored only twice in their last 36 power-play opportunities.
...Who's Hot: Tim Thomas has done his best to keep his low-scoring Bruins in games. In nine appearances, Thomas has 2.66 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage. The Bruins have scored only four goals in last season's Vezina Trophy winner's five losses.

Tomas Holmstrom has been solid for the Red Wings, especially on the power play. Holmstrom, who has never been afraid to go straight to the net, has seven goals in 12 games. Three of those tallies have come with the man advantage. … Henrik Zetterberg has only scored twice, but he does have nine assists....Puck Drop: This is a classic case of a team that can't score
facing a team that's experienced difficulty preventing goals. If the
Bruins are ever going to snap out of their offensive funk, Tuesday
would seem a pretty good time to do it.

Given that, for Versus' schedule makers, anyway, a game against a team west of Pittsburgh may as well be a West Coast tilt, I'm sure those who dig predictable storylines wouldn't mind it if the Big, Bad Bruins piled on the Declining Wings so that tonight's game can serve as a nationally-televised changing of the guard...

In any case, aside from praising the play of their afterburner line, Babcock reiterated his stance to MLive.com's own Ansar Khan, suggesting that his charges have a ways to go as they begin a stretch of 14 games in 28 days (thoughnine of those games take place at Joe Louis Arena). If the Wings plan on climbing up the Western Conference standings, their 3-1 win over the Calgary Flames on Saturday has to serve as the start of a winning trend:

November 3, MLive.com: "It feels like we've been on the road since the season started,"
Babcock said. "To be over .500 on the trip (2-1-2) was good. I thought
our team played real well, and our goaltender (Chris Osgood) really
helped us in the last game (3-1 win in Calgary), which was real
important. Now, we got to continue to get quicker and better like we have been doing."

Osgood
will start Tuesday. The Bruins, who finished with the best record in
the Eastern Conference last season, are off a sluggish 6-6-1 start and
missing two key forwards: Marc Savard (broken foot) and Milan Lucic
(surgery on finger).

"You look at Boston's lineup, it's much
like ours that way," Babcock said. "They got some high-end guys that
are out. No one cares, you just got to find a way to survive and win."

Babcock
said his team, despite its 5-4-3 record, is playing much harder than it
did last season. It is not winning as much because it is not as deep or
as potent offensively, he added.

"The team's been playing with
more pace. We didn't have enough pace early, partly because (some) guys
missed training camp," Babcock said. "Now, Helmer (Darren Helm) is back
rolling, which should really help us. We got to continue to get the
kind of goaltending we got the other night and continue to play well
without the puck."

Babcock also duly noted that his team has taken some time to gel thanks to its roster turnover, as he told the Windsor Star's Dave Waddell:

November 3, Windsor Star: "When you're half (older guys) and half (younger guys) like we are,
we're a work in progress and its taken us longer to get going," Babcock
said. "In saying that, we're playing way harder than we did last year. It's night and day, but we aren't winning as much. We're playing harder than anytime we did in the first half of last year."

Overall, however, the Red Wings' players agreed with their coach's assessment of their team's relative health:

"The best thing was winning the last game (in Calgary)," forward Kris Draper said. "That's something we needed. We're
looking for things to build on and create momentum. We created some of
that. We played a solid hockey game and didn't give up a lot. This is a very important month for us with the home games we have."

Um, make that, "The Wings' players made some statements of their own":

"The Edmonton game, I think that was wake-up call for a lot of guys," Draper said. "That was one of the most humiliating experiences we've had. We just weren't doing anything. The Calgary game from start to finish was one of the best games we've played this year."

Nicklas Lidstrom concurred:

"I hope the team learned a lesson that we can play well defensively," Lidstrom said. "We can play with desperation. We played a defensive style without the puck real well. On the offensive end, we were hanging on to the puck. We were getting the puck to the net. We were getting it back too."

The Detroit Examiner's Mike Mouat also posted a game preview, and, for the record: Dan O'Halloran and Kevin Pollock are slated to referee the game, with Shane Heyer and Greg Devorski working the lines.